Themes and XHTML

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Revision as of 23:00, 24 January 2010 by LWC (talk | contribs) (XHTML Constant: Fixed spelling)

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Since version 1.5.0, Geeklog supports XHTML compliant themes. This means that Geeklog will automatically create XHTML compliant tags when required.

Switching to XHTML

Whether Geeklog will switch to XHTML compliant mode or not depends on the definition of an XHTML variable in the PHP code. This variable can either be defined by the theme (in the theme's functions.php file) or by selecting an XHTML DOCTYPE from the Configuation (since Geeklog 1.6.0):

Configuration > Geeklog > Theme > Theme > DOCTYPE Declaration

Selecting an XHTML DOCTYPE will automatically set the XHTML constant properly (any definition made by the theme still takes precedence, though, so make sure the two don't conflict).

XHTML Constant

For an XHTML compliant theme, the XHTML constant should be defined like so:

define('XHTML', ' /');

Otherwise, the constant will be defined as an empty string:

define('XHTML', '');

Plugins can simply use the XHTML constant - Geeklog will take care that is always defined. The same is true for code in lib-custom.php, with the exception of code that is not located in a function (since lib-custom.php will be included before the theme, and any global code in lib-custom.php would therefore be executed before the constant is defined).

Template Variables

The definition of the XHTML constant is also available as a {xhtml} template variable in all template files used by Geeklog. This way, it is possible to create themes that will work both as XHTML and "plain" HTML by using the template variable for tags that have to be closed in XHTML, e.g.

<br{xhtml}>
<input type="submit" name="test"{xhtml}>
<img src="image.png" alt=""{xhtml}>

Other Template Variables

Themes that are written to be both valid HTML and XHTML (as described above) should use the {doctype} variable as the first line in header.thtml instead of hard-coding the DOCTYPE.

In XHTML mode, Geeklog will also provide a {xmlns} variable that will contain the xmlns attribute for the html element.

Putting it all together, the first 3 lines of your theme's header.thtml should look like this:

{doctype}
<html{lang_attribute}{xmlns}>
<head>

The {lang_attribute} will set a lang attribute in multi-language setups.

The Professional theme that ships with Geeklog uses the {doctype} template variable and is both HTML and XHTML compliant, depending on the DOCTYPE selected in the Configuration.